3^ AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



that in a great many cases they are not growing the product 

 they should, hence they do not reap the full reward of their 

 labor. 



In looking into the matter for the purpose of deciding what 

 was the best to do in an experimental way, we found that too 

 large a proportion of No. 3 fruit was grown. Our people had 

 failed to recognize certain things which are well recognized by 

 the western fruit grower, and which are recognized no doubt 

 by the majority of your fruit growers. Take, for instance, the 

 one thing — the thinning of fruit for the purpose of getting the 

 largest returns from the orchard. It was the office of the 

 experiment station to take up the matter and prove that the 

 removal of a per cent of fruit by thinning would not mean any 

 loss, but a decided gain to the fruit growler. We planned out a 

 series of experiments so that we could tell the fruit grower at 

 once whether he could make any profit by removing fifteen to 

 twenty per cent of the. apples. The results are tabulated here- 

 with. This work has been conducted for the past three years. 



APPLE THINNING EXPERIMENT 1912. 



To determine whether any gain would result from removing 

 some of the fruit from heavily ladened trees, experiments were 

 conducted during the season in an orchard in Berwick, N. S. 

 The variety in this experiment was Gravenstein. The work of 

 thinning was done on July 30. This was about tW'O w'eeks after 

 the usual drop had occurred. The work should have been 

 started ten days earlier for best results. The trees selected 

 were as nearly alike as it was possible to get them and they had 

 apparently the same set of fruit. From the thinned trees all 

 spotted and ill-shaped fruits were removed, and only one apple 

 was left to a fruit cluster. The apples were left from four to 

 six inches apart and were evenly distributed over the tree. 



After thinning, the ground under the thinned and unthinnned 

 tree was cleaned, and apples falling after that time were counted. 

 This was done to find out whether thinning w'ould prevent 

 excessive dropping which occurs in Gravensteins if they are 

 heavily filled just before the fruit is mature, and also to get 

 the number of apples each tree had on it to start with. A record 

 was kept of the number of apples thinned from the tree. 



